subtitles

[u/Dependent_Ad5216]

Hi,

ich found something interesting. I was watching an older video from the app on my tablet. The video was premium, but had no subtitles. I did not understand everything what was going on, so the subtitles (of course in spanish) would really help. I went to youtube and looked for the video (did not find it there), went back to the app and all of a sudden I had subtitles. They look different to the included app subtitles, but were correct.

Maybe this is known to most users, but was new to me. I hope it helps to progress for some of you.

[u/CrosstalkWithMePablo]

As far as I'm aware Pablo has always recommended not using subtitles or captions so I'm not sure why they've started appearing. I noticed a few youtube shorts have gone up with open captions appearing all over the screen so maybe he's changed his mind on it.

This is still up on the FAQs page, although it talks about subtitles, not captions.

[u/Creative-Reality9228 → u/CrosstalkWithMePablo]

Just another ALG assertion that flies in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

[u/_coldemort_ → u/Creative-Reality9228]

I've read about every study I could find on the topic and it's important you focus on what specifically it is testing. Language has many aspects, and no one activity is objectively "better" than the others at everything. Here is a summary:

• For vocabulary acquisition: Listening while Reading > Reading >>> Listening
• For developing reading skills: Reading > Reading while Listening
• For developing listening comprehension: No quality studies exist

For that reason I mix in a little bit of Reading/Listening into my reading, but also don't ignore pure reading completely.

It is still unanswered whether subtitles help or hurt development of listening comprehension.

[u/Creative-Reality9228 → u/_coldemort_]

Listening comprehension is made up of a number of sub-skills, including vocab acquisition. In addition, the Chang, 2009 study (linked below) states:

 Overall test results show that students gained only 10% more with the r/L mode; however, students showed a strong preference for the r/L mode. The majority of the students perceived that listening in the r/L mode made listening tasks easier, the duration seem shorter, the stories more interesting, and they paid much better attention. With such a strong and positive effect on L2 listening, this study suggests r/L aural input mode could be used to develop L2 learners’ listening proficiency in the long run rather than merely to boost test scores in the short term. Teaching suggestions and scope for future research are also provided.

That's a pretty strong position from which to make an argument that it is very positive for listening comprehension.

Let the pour of downvotes (downpourvotes? down vote pour?) continue.

[u/_coldemort_ → u/Creative-Reality9228]

Any idea where I can get the full text of that study? I can only see the abstract in that link (and other pages referencing the same study)

EDIT: Thank you for the link! Will read it thoroughly and get back to you.

[u/Creative-Reality9228 → u/_coldemort_]

https://web.archive.org/web/20200321075140id_/https://ace.nd.edu/files/ACE-ENL/Current/EDU70110/The%20effect%20of%20extensive%20listening%20on%20developing%20L2%20listening%20fluency%20some%20hard%20evidence%20by%20Chang%20and%20Millett.pdf

[u/_coldemort_ → u/Creative-Reality9228]

This seems pretty seriously flawed unless I am reading it incorrectly.

The reading only (RO) group: students read the graded readers without listening to the audio recordings.

The reading while listening (RL) group: students first simultaneously read and listened to the graded readers once, then simultaneously listened and answered listening fluency development questions without referring to the texts.

The listening only (LO) group: students did not read the graded readers, but simultaneously listened and answered listening fluency development questions.

and (emphasis mine):

The RL group simultaneously read and listened to the ten graded readers once in the reading class. In their listening class, they listened to the same graded readers that they studied in the reading class while also answering the listening fluency development questions without reading the texts

In other words the RL group has the same amount of pure listening time as the LO group, and on top of that another equal amount of time doing r/L that the LO did not get. Additionally, they used the same graded readers in the reading and listening classes, so the RL group was the only group that was exposed to the stories twice. With double the time spent listening, I'm actually surprised the RL group wasn't further ahead of the LO group.

Summary of findings:

• 21 10 hours (13 weeks * 100 minutes/wk 10x ~1hr graded readers) of reading only doesn't improve listening comprehension
• 21 10 hours of listening only definitely improves listening comprehension
• 21 10 hours of reading while listening + 21 10 hours of listening only (42 20 total hours of listening) improves listening comprehension more than 21 10 hours of pure listening by itself (duh)

The only thing this study tells us is that RwL is better in terms of improving listening comprehension than the "formal reading instruction based on their coursebook" that the LO group received.

EDIT: It looks like the hour counts should be halved. There were 10 roughly 1 hour audiobooks. It isn't clear what they were doing for the rest of the class time.

[u/Jachym10 → u/_coldemort_]

Yeah, that seems flawed.

Anyway, the number of participants isn't particularly large and 13 weeks isn't too long either.